


Branches to Hands

by Nevanna



Category: Runaways (Comics)
Genre: Alice Hayes - Freeform, Gen, Gene Hayes - Freeform, Molly Hayes - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-28
Updated: 2014-10-28
Packaged: 2018-02-22 22:50:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2524592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nevanna/pseuds/Nevanna
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Molly Hayes falls out of one game of make-believe and into another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Branches to Hands

**Author's Note:**

> This fills the "broken bones" square for Hurt/Comfort Bingo 2014. It takes place about four years before the beginning of _Runaways_. The title is from "Lullaby for a Stormy Night" by Vienna Teng.
> 
> Content warning: Non-explicit reference to mental manipulation/gaslighting.

“Princess Powerful climbs higher and higher over the fence that surrounds the goblins’ palace,” Molly whispered as she reached for the next limb. She’d climbed this tree (or trapeze, or tower, or pirate ship) a million times or more, usually imagining a team of superhero friends close behind her, waiting for her signal. 

The battle would only end when one of her parents called her in for dinner, three math worksheets, and a chapter of _The Phantom Tollbooth_ before bed. Molly had been reading chapter books before anybody else in the second grade, but she loved being read to almost as much as she loved fighting goblins.

She had just gotten to the part of the game where she saved Wolverine from being sliced into pieces by flying poison knives, when her cape caught on a branch, her foot slipped, and she fell all the way to the ground.

Her arm hurt more than anything had ever hurt in her _life_. Even through the pain, she could hear running footsteps, and her mother crying out her name. 

\--

Molly left the hospital with her arm in a purple cast and a set of instructions about swimming or showering while she wore it. “Maybe you can ask your friends to sign your cast for you on Saturday,” her mother said as they drove home. 

“Maybe.” Molly liked Karolina and Nico, and the other kids that her family had been visiting every year since she was a baby, but they were still _big_ kids, and even if they were fun to play with when they weren’t treating her like an enormous pest, they weren’t the kind of friends that she could picture seeing every day and sharing her secrets with.

Not that she would tell even her best friends _all_ of her secrets, or her family’s.

“You were very brave in there. The doctor thought so, too.”

“Superheroes aren’t scared of anything,” Molly replied.

Her mother scowled and muttered something that Molly couldn’t hear. “I think you should take some time off from being a superhero. I’m sure that… now, remind me, are you with the Avengers this week?”

“I’m helping the X-Men defeat the goblin hordes.”

“Well, I’m sure that the X-Men can handle themselves without you.”

Molly knew better than to protest. Later, tucked into bed with her favorite stuffed animal, Doop, snuggled beside her, and the nearby sound of her mother’s voice describing the city of Dictionopolis, she couldn’t imagine anyplace she’d rather be.

\--

Molly opened her eyes in the middle of the night to find that the door had slipped open a crack while she slept, and an almost familiar voice was drifting up from downstairs. “The rest of The Pride doesn’t have to care, as long as _you_ understand.” A pause, like her mother was listening to someone on the phone. “If you don’t want to be drooling down your chin while a nurse has to remind you of your own name every day for the rest of your miserable life, you’ll reconsider.” 

Everything was quiet then, and Molly hugged Doop tighter with her good arm, unsure of what she’d just heard but more scared than she’d been when she fell out of the tree.

The door swung all the way open, and her father stepped into the room. “Mol?”

“Daddy, what’s going on?”

“I just came to check on you, sweetheart. Does your arm hurt?”

“Who was Mommy yelling at?”

Daddy sat down beside her and smoothed her hair, and she wondered if he could hear her thoughts. When she’d tumbled through the branches toward the ground, had her mother heard them, too? “Nobody was yelling, I promise. You must have been dreaming.”

“Wasn’t,” Molly whispered. But she was already wondering if the voice from downstairs had been real. It mattered a whole lot less than how soft her blankets were and the knowledge that her mom and dad were here to look after her. Whatever she had heard, when she woke up the next morning, she had forgotten about it again.


End file.
